Non-coherent FSK: An attractive modulation set for millimeter-wave communications

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) systems suffer from an assortment of propagation and hardware challenges such as extremely high pathloss/shadowing and amplifier non-linearity/phase noise, respectively. In this paper, we demonstrate via simulations that non-coherent frequency shift keying (FSK) can utilize the vast bandwidth at mm-wave frequencies to combat significant pathloss and shadowing in this band, while being robust to amplifier non-linearity and phase noise. To support our findings, we establish a comprehensive simulation setup and set of parameters that consider the impact of pathloss, shadowing, amplifier non-linearity, and phase noise, at mm-wave frequencies. Our results indicate that non-coherent FSK outperforms other modulation schemes such as phase shift keying and quadrature amplitude modulation. This outcome combined with the low detection complexity of non-coherent FSK make it an attractive modulation for achieving multi Gbps wireless links at mm-wave frequencies. The proposed comprehensive simulation setup can also be applied to investigate and validate the performance of various mm-wave systems in practical settings.